Not surprisingly, Scott Ritter, the man who was right on the Iraq war before almost anyone else, has the answer:
If I were to address [the Democrats in Congress], I would focus my effort on trying to impress them with the issue that will cost them political power down the road. This issue is Iran. While President Bush, a Republican, remains Commander in Chief, a Democrat-controlled Congress shares responsibility on war and peace from this point on. The conflict in Iraq, although ongoing, is a product of the Republican-controlled past. The looming conflict with Iran, however, will be assessed as a product of a Democrat-controlled present and future. If Iraq destroyed the Republican Party, Iran will destroy the Democrats.
I would strongly urge Congress, both the House of Representatives and the Senate, to hold real hearings on Iran. Not the mealy-mouthed Joe Biden-led hearings we witnessed on Iraq in July-August 2002, where he and his colleagues rubber-stamped the President’s case for war, but genuine hearings that draw on all the lessons of Congressional failures when it came to Iraq. Summon all the President’s men (and women), and grill them on every phrase and word uttered about the Iranian “threat,” especially as it has been linked to nuclear weapons. Demand facts to back up the rhetoric.
Summon the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), or any other lobby promoting confrontation with Iran, to the forefront, so that the warnings they offer in whispers from a back room can be articulated before the American public. Hold these conjurers of doom accountable for their positions by demanding they back them up with hard fact. See if the US intelligence community concurs with the dire warnings put forward by these pro-war lobbyists, and if it doesn’t, ask who, then, is driving US policy toward Iran? Those mandated by public law and subjected to the oversight of Congress? Or others, operating outside any framework representative of the will of the American people?
If a real case, based on facts as they pertain to the genuine national security interests of the United States, can be made for a confrontation with Iran that leads to military conflict, so be it. America should never shy away from defending that which legitimately needs defending. The sacrifice expected of our military forces, while tragic, will be defensible. But if the case for war with Iran is revealed to be as illusory as was the case for war with Iraq, then Congress must take action to stop this conflict from occurring. This is the Democrats’ issue now, the one that will make or break them in 2008 and beyond.
If hearings show no case for war with Iran, then Congress must act to insure that the United States cannot move toward conflict with that nation on the strength of executive dictate alone. As things currently stand, the Bush Administration, emboldened with a vision of the unitary executive unprecedented in our nation’s history, believes it has all of the legal authority it requires when it comes to engaging Iran militarily. The silence of Congress following the President’s decision to dispatch a second carrier battle group to the Persian Gulf has been deafening. The fact that a third carrier battle group (the USS Ronald Reagan) will probably join these two in the near future has also gone unnoticed by most, if not all, in Congress.
The time is now, right now, to call for these hearings before it is too late. Before Bush decides to pull the trigger, or allows Israel to pull the trigger for him. Before the initial strikes occur. Before whatever excuse for war can be concocted by Cheny’s fertile imagination and sold to the lapdog media by Karl Rove’s spin. Before we reap the whirlwind.
An what we absolutely, positively don’t need from Congressional Democrats is Senator and Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton giving the Bush administration cover for using military force against Iran:
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Calling Iran a danger to the US and one of Israel’s greatest threats, US senator and presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said “no option can be taken off the table” when dealing with that nation.
“US policy must be clear and unequivocal: We cannot, we should not, we must not permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons,” the Democrat told a crowd of Israel supporters. “In dealing with this threat … no option can be taken off the table.”
Clinton spoke at a Manhattan dinner held by the largest pro-Israel lobbying group in the US, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Some 1,700 supporters applauded as she cited her efforts on behalf of the Jewish state and spoke scathingly of Iran’s decision to hold a conference last month that questioned whether the Holocaust took place.
This alone is reason enough never to support Hillary Clinton for President. When the Democrats should be doing all in their power to orevent a widening war in the Middle East that could result in a region wide conflagration, she is spouting the same rhetoric as President Bush? Absurd. Absurdly dangerous, too.
Please, Democrats, and especially the Chairpersons of any House or Senate Committee with any conceivable justification for calling hearings about the Iranian crisis, please schedule those hearings today. The time to head off a cataclysm of violence that would be worse than any we have known since World War III is shorter than you believe.
